Not coincidentally, two of the reasons Canada has decided to abandon Kyoto is its futility and the desire in Canada to grow the economy:

Monday’s announcement was not a surprise. Canada faced international criticism at the recent climate talks in South Africa amid reports it would pull out of Kyoto. Kent had said previously that signing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change was one of the previous government’s biggest blunders.

The accord requires countries to give a year’s notice to withdraw. Kent said the move saves Canada $14 billion in penalties for not achieving its Kyoto targets.

“To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of either removing every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle of every kind from Canadian roads or closing down the entire farming and agriculture sector and cutting heat to every home, office, hospital, factory and building in Canada,” Kent said.

Harper’s Conservative government is reluctant to hurt Canada’s booming oil sands sector, which is the country’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gases and a reason it has reneged on its Kyoto commitments.

Canada wants to embrace the agreement reached in Durban this week, but that’s easy to understand. The Durban agreement, Canada says, will allow for job creation and economic growth. Why? Because it doesn’t actually require anyone to do anything for several years, and even at that point is much more aspirational than concrete:

Officials at climate change meetings in South Africa struck an 11th-hour deal to avoid the collapse of international negotiations over global warming, averting the worst fears of environmental advocates but doing little to immediately advance the cause of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

The deal would effectively postpone new concerted global action on climate change for at least eight years. However, given the political realities, particularly in the United States and China, it probably offered the best chance to move the process forward, analysts said.

The mood at the U.N. gathering in Durban was somber as the talks ended just before dawn Sunday, participants said, largely because many questions remained unanswered and the risk of a catastrophic increase in global average temperature had not been reduced.

Under the deal, nations committed themselves to talks aimed at reaching a legally binding agreement by 2015 that would limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. The limits would not go into effect until 2020 at the earliest.

So the “agreement” is a non-binding pledge to meet again and make another agreement in, oh, three or four years, and that agreement won’t have to take effect for another five years after that. The only commitments in the near future for the Durban agreement is some voluntary reduction goals that emerging nations won’t bother to meet and industrial nations will ignore. Just like … Kyoto.

All of this would be worrisome, if as the Miami Herald reports in the link above, carbon emissions will overheat the planet in the way that “widely accepted models of the Earth’s climate” predict. However, they have failed to predict pretty much all of the climate outcomes we’ve seen over the last decade or more, and the previously wide acceptance has transformed into considerable skepticism. Canada’s making the right choice in bailing out of Kyoto, and don’t be surprised if more nations follow suit.

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In both instances, the climate warmed enough that the peasants were able to raise enough surplus crops to support a parasitic class of rulers, thinkers and artists.

A cursory study of Earth’s history would show that climate has never been static. The Earth has endured incredible climate swings over the millennia — most of which occurred long before homo sapiens reared up on his hind legs and became the world’s super predator.

The liberals almost destroyed Canada just a few years back. They elected a conservative like Harper to try to regain some semblance of Canadian life. We are in the same boat as they were and Europe is today. We have marxists/socialists dedicated to destroying life as we know it within every branch of our government. If we do not respond to their perversion of our country as Canada did, then we are damned to the depths of Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and England to name a few who are past the point of no return in their economies. We have been taken over by an organized force without a bullet being fired. Unless we wake up, life as we know it will cease to exist. To some that will be a good thing, to the majority, I think not.

Damn it! If only our Founders were able to win Canada in the 1800′s, we would have more commonsense in this country!!

timbok on December 13, 2011 at 12:22 PM

In my home Province of New Brunswick you can find the DNA from the entire original 13 colonies. The template of English Canada was laid down by American born conservatives driven out by the progressive forces of the revolution for being in disagreement. Twice in the R8v8olution, attempts to take Canada were foiled. In the War of 1812, at least 7 separate invasions were thrown back. Again, after the Civil War, two more attempts were made (by a mysterious Irish Army of Civil War veterans), again strangled in the attempt. So you did try.

Americans have fun mocking everything Canadian. I’m not sure why. Essentially, we are you. I have many lost cousins in Westchester County NY. And you owe me a farm of 150 acres at Hampstead Long Island. :)

“Any Canadians want to enlighten me as to the areas in Canada with the best weather and most eligible women?”

– Sorry, you won’t get both in the same place. For the weather, that would be either Florida, or Cuba if you are on a tight budget :-) Victoria/Vancouver/Southern BC if you insist on staying in the country.

– For teh wimminz, just about any big city. We have less obesity up here too.

The liberals almost destroyed Canada just a few years back. They elected a conservative like Harper to try to regain some semblance of Canadian life. We are in the same boat as they were and Europe is today. We have marxists/socialists dedicated to destroying life as we know it within every branch of our government. If we do not respond to their perversion of our country as Canada did, then we are damned to the depths of Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and England to name a few who are past the point of no return in their economies. We have been taken over by an organized force without a bullet being fired. Unless we wake up, life as we know it will cease to exist. To some that will be a good thing, to the majority, I think not.

volsense on December 13, 2011 at 12:57 PM
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If you think our society or our financials are headed in the same direction as those idiots in Europe (or were headed there under the Liberals), then you don’t know sweet f*ck all about your own country.

Between 25 and 35% of the price of our gas is tax to the good ol’ government.

We’re out of Kyoto because every single day our oil sands belch out more greenhouse gases than every single vehicle in the country. Right now it’s pretty dirty, but technology will catch up. Kyoto was flawed from the start. Northern countries like us get f*cked by the semi-arbitrary benchmarks calculated by bureaucrats.

they have sacked it up as a country. no kyoto, tar sand processing, balanced their budget and now they’ve banned women wearing tents during their citizenship ceremony. they even require their voters to produce an photo ID!

contrast that with us having a marxist that makes lenin proud, a 50% welfare rate, $15,000,000,000,000 in debt and over a $1,000,000 per citizen in liabilities and unfunded liablities.

Please don’t make the mistake of presuming Canada is a conservative country. Far from it. The CPC winning the election was a divine accident of a split left wing electorate. And our Conservative Party is really not much more conservative than the Democratic Party in the US on fiscal issues. Canada is somewhere between Britain and the US as far as where its socialist tendencies and sympathies lie. Of course Obama is moving the US closer and closer to Canada’s model daily.

As far as Kyoto, the funny thing about our conservative government on some issues is it is playing with some strange political handbook where it “talks” reconciliation and gives the public all the global warming talking points, but then finds some other arguments to abandon carbon trading and carbon cuttings schemes. Why it refuses to be intellectually honest I don’t know. Maybe it presumes the Canadian public can’t handle conservative ideas?

I’m from Alberta too, and this is the most awesome news. In the 1980s, the Liebral gov’t of the day created the National Energy Policy, which drained the economy so much it reminded people of the Great Depression. Kyoto threatened to do the same. Now that this crisis is averted, life can return to normal.

But as much as I’m proud of being from Alberta, I prefer living in the US. Obama’s not so bad compared to Canada’s leftists (who are being driven insane by the withdrawal from Kyoto BTW, it’s very funny). The US has been through worse. Relax, all will be well.

Good to see our friends up north make the smart move.
Kyoto has done nothing but hurt economic growth in quite a few countries. With how Canada is drastically increasing their export of their Oil and other natural resources staying in the Kyoto Protocol was really a bad idea for them.